


You Don't Have to be Constrained

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: Alternate Universe
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-11
Updated: 2011-02-11
Packaged: 2017-10-15 14:22:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/161690
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU.  Sheldon lives alone in an apartment that’s made for two people.  Penny moves in across the hall.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Don't Have to be Constrained

Sheldon lives alone in an apartment that’s made for two people. He dislikes the indulgence, but he is too used to his routine to move, and after three months of interviewing prospective roommates, he accepted the situation, at least temporarily.

As these things are wont to do, though, temporarily stretches, and stretches, and stretches. He appreciates that he never has to make concessions. He enjoys the privacy and solitude that allows him to concentrate on his work. He can afford the apartment on his own, at least for now, and while it might not be economical to continue paying the extra amount, he puts off setting more interviews.

At work, as in his private life, he stays fairly insular. After all, he has no need to have any personal relationship with his coworkers. They are, after all, only his coworkers, and he is perfectly satisfied with his current life.

At home, he organizes his food as he likes. The furniture in the apartment is bare, but he has no need for anything more. He knows he should move somewhere else, somewhere smaller, and when the apartment across the hall is open he considers moving into it. Before he has the chance, however, a small blonde woman moves in.

He runs into her on the stairs, one day. She attempts conversation, and he suffers through it as well as he is able. She is, after all, a neighbor.

Sheldon dislikes driving, but he has been forced to overcome his ~~fear~~ dislike. Penny, the blonde woman, knocks on his door one afternoon, desperate, and asks if he can possibly give her a ride to the Cheesecake factory, where she works. Sheldon’s mother taught him well that he should help a lady in distress, whatever the personal cost to himself. He takes her, and if Penny seems anxious at the way he obeys all driving laws to the strictest degree, and tends to stay at least five miles under the speed limit, she says nothing.

The next night Penny knocks on his door.

“Hey,” she says. “I made you cookies! As thanks, I mean.”

Sheldon leans on the doorway, and attempts a casual shrug. “I believe it’s what neighbors are expected to do for one another,” he says, and she laughs as if he’s being humorous.

“Yeah,” she says. “Hey, so I was wondering, I’m having some friends over tomorrow night, you wanna come?”

Sheldon runs his fingertips along the wall next to the door. “I tend not to do well in social situations,” he says. “Also, I was planning on working tomorrow night.”

Penny frowns at him. “Aren’t you a scientist?” she says.

“Theoretical physicist,” Sheldon says, his voice sharp, and she grins and waves a hand at him like he’s being deliberately complicated.

“What I mean is, can’t you set your own hours? Come on, you were totally my hero, you’re owed a break.”

“Penny…” he says, trying to come up with some way to deter her, but he’s fairly certain his mother would not approve him shutting the door in her face. Plus, Penny is merely attempting to return a favor, and he knows enough about social obligations to know it would be rude to refuse her.

“At what time should I come?” he says, and Penny grins, although there’s a slight shadow on her face as she looks at him.

“Come over at eight,” she says. “It’s not going to be anything big, just some drinks with my friends.” She pauses, and then, teeth worrying her lip, she adds, “Do you happen to have any jeans? I just haven’t seen you wear any.”

Sheldon simply looks at her. “No,” he says. “I don’t.”

Penny nods slowly. “Okay!” she says. “Well, I’ll see you tomorrow!”

“…yes,” he says. “I suppose you will.”

 

 

 

 

The next night, at precisely 7:58, Sheldon is standing in the center of his living room. He’s wearing dark brown pants and a blue Batman shirt with a charcoal grey shirt underneath. He’s holding, gingerly, a bottle of wine in his hands, which his mother had commanded him to buy not four hours ago over the phone. (He immediately regretted asking her advice, but Missy was clearly not an acceptable candidate.)

His palms, unexpectedly, feel slightly clammy around the glass bottle. He’s no longer accustomed to prolonged, non-work related human interaction, other than the comic book store, and even for that he prefers solitude.

At last, when his watch ticks to 7:59, he leaves his apartment, carefully locking the door behind him. He knocks on Penny’s door three times, successively calling her name, and when she answers with a large grin and a low-cut shirt, he blindly shoves the bottle into her hands. Every instinct in his body is screaming at him to retreat, but before he can gather himself together her hand is on his arm, pulling him inside.

(He’d noticed earlier her inclination to overwhelm with touch, her over-familiar taps and pats along his unprepared body.)

“Sheldon!” she says, and he’s no student of human emotion, but her voice pitches up and her smile creases her eyes and she pulls him over to her friends with enthusiasm. “I’m so glad you could come! Guys, this is Sheldon, my neighbor! Sheldon, these are Bernadette, and Kurt, and…”

She continues down the row of people, and Sheldon glances at each of them, nodding slightly as they smile or nod in greeting. When she’s done, she glances down at the wine that’s still in her hand.

“Thanks for the wine, by the way,” she says with a smile. “You want a glass, or maybe a beer or something?”

“I don’t usually consume alcohol,” he says. The music in the apartment seems too loud. All around them conversation is picking back up at an alarming rate.

“You sure you don’t want something small?” Penny asks, bumping into his arm casually as she leads him over to the kitchen. Anthony and Tanya move out of their way but manage to retain their incremental distance from one another.

What Sheldon _wants_ , he is sure, is to leave this hellspawned apartment and never return.

“Perhaps a glass of water?” he prompts, before considering the sanitary state of the kitchen. “Or—” he says, and then pauses, uncomfortably flustered.

Penny turns and rests a hand on his bare forearm. “You okay?” she asks.

“It’s—the apartment is very warm,” he says. “Perhaps…?”

Penny smiles, and Sheldon regrets telling that only half-truth, if only because she’s done nothing to deserve it, and his mother had always been very clear that lies were unacceptable.

“Hey, I hear we’ve got roof access in this building,” she says unexpectedly. “You want to check it out, get some fresh air?”

“Your—your party?” Sheldon asks, and she shakes her head.

“They’ll be fine for a few minutes,” she says. “Let me just let Bernadette know, and she’ll keep them in line,” she adds with a small grin.

After Penny walks away, a tall, heavily-muscled brute of a man walks up to Sheldon. Sheldon, coming from Texas, is not unaccustomed to his sort. He’s not even unaccustomed to them entering far too closely his personal space, although he retains a solid dislike of such events.

“So you’re Penny’s neighbor?” the man—Kurt, as Sheldon recalls—asks. Sheldon does not take a step backwards, but he does cross his arms in front of his chest. They brush against the front of Kurt’s shirt on their way, and neither of them pretend to notice.

“I am,” Sheldon says. “Are you considering renting an apartment in this building?”

“What?” Kurt blinks. Sheldon shrugs, one shoulder lifting and then falling back into position.

“I assumed, given your interest in where I live, that you were asking for an opinion on the state of the building,” he says. “Was I incorrect?”

“Wh—yes!” Kurt says, sounding irritated. Sheldon frowns.

“Then?”

“Look, just don’t try anything with Penny,” Kurt says. “She’s my girlfriend.”

“Try anything?” Sheldon repeats, curious. Kurt is scowling, now.

“She always comes back to me,” he says.

Penny, out of nowhere, slides in the very limited space between the two of them. “Hello, boys!” she says, overly chipper. “Kurt, you’re my _ex_ , and you've had too much to drink. Tyler’s going to drive you home, and Bernadette has full permission to use my baseball bat if you start something. You remember what happened last time?”

Kurt takes a step back, and Sheldon glances with renewed respect at the almost timid-looking Bernadette.

“Now,” Penny says, arm pulling Sheldon closer, “Where were we?”

“We were going to see the roof,” Sheldon says as Penny pulls him out the door. “You have an…interesting collection of friends.”

Penny shrugs, and starts up the stairs rather than taking the elevator. “You meet people,” she says, “You want to make them part of your life, you know?”

Sheldon, in point of fact, does _not_ know, and stays silent.

“Life’s just more fun with people to share it with.”

Sheldon stays silent as Penny pulls him out through the roof access door, and Sheldon remembers to prop it, knowing its tendency to stick from the outside. Penny watches him.

“You come out here a lot?” she asks. She’s stepped away from him, now, eyes focused on the skyline, on the way the city lights flare out in the darkness.

“It’s quiet,” Sheldon says, stepping closer to her side. “It’s...calming.”

“You do a lot of quiet, don’t you?” Penny asks.

Sheldon isn’t sure why he’s out here with her, but she’s glancing up at his face, waiting for an answer, so he gives her the courtesy of thinking it through.

“I suppose,” he says. “I have my work,” he adds, but he can hear the defensiveness lining the edges of his voice, and he bites it back.

Penny looks back out across Pasadena. “All work…” she says, a half-smile creeping up her face.

“I watch television,” he says, frowning now. “I read, and play computer games, and—”

“I watch television,” she cuts in. “I want to be actress,” she adds, leaning in a little as if it’s supposed to be a secret, eyes glittering with something like amusement or happiness.

He is sure, if nothing else, that he does not belong on the roof of his building with an actress. Even his mother would back him up here. He is sure of it. He is a theoretical physicist. He doesn't belong here.

“Perhaps…” he says, “Perhaps I should let you get back to your party.”

She’s frowning a little at him. It’s a look he’s not unfamiliar with—she’s considering him as if he were some complex puzzle to figure out.

“What do you watch?” she asks. “On television.”

Sheldon thinks briefly of the shows he enjoys, considering them all.

“ _Doctor Who_ ,” he says.

“Hmm,” she says, “Maybe I’ll have to give it a watch sometime.”

She’s still turned towards him, waiting, and it takes him a long moment to puzzle through social etiquette, to figure out what’s been said and what’s not been said.

“I have the DVDs,” he says at last.

She spares a glance at the sky, arms crossing in front of her as the breeze picks up. “I could borrow them,” she says, not a question, her voice flat in something like disappointment.

He was brought up right. He’d give her his jacket if he had one. He doesn’t like to see her shiver out here.

“You could come over and watch them with me,” he says, his voice unsure. “We could order Thai food, and I could make sure you understood the storylines.”

The storylines of _Doctor Who_ , he knows, are not unreasonably complex. But then she smiles up at him, as if he finally passed some hidden test, and the matter skitters from his mind.

“That sounds fun,” she says, and this time her voice lilts with real pleasure. “You’re right, it’s getting cold and I should go make sure no one’s broken anything, but I’ll see you soon, then?”

Sheldon nods and Penny has a hand on his arm and is tugging him back inside before he can be surprised at her touch once more. She kicks the brick he’d propped the door open with out of the way, and then they descend the stairs together.

In the hallway, she leans in a little as if to hug him, but pulls back after an inch or two. “Goodnight, Sheldon,” she says, and then squeezes the arm still under her hand and lets him go. Noise spills out of her apartment as she opens the door, and she doesn’t look back to see Sheldon, still standing in the hallway, watching her.

 

 

 

 

The next day, he doesn’t call his mother for advice.

He does buy a couch.

 

  
_Finis_   



End file.
